... and I don't mean something like injecting ads; I mean they modify the images you download and the pages that you read. They do that without telling you, under the umbrella of "improving your browsing experience". Let me give you some examples.

Today I copied two image files on a server: a JPEG and a PNG file. When downloaded via a normal network connection, I was getting the original file, about 50KB in size. When downloaded via 3G the image was different! In the jpeg case the file was smaller by a few hundred bytes and in the case of the PNG the file was actually bigger than the original. What was worse, the metadata information in those photos, like the software used to compress it, for example, was completely lost.

I couldn't believe my eyes. I strongly believe that what you ask for from the Internet you should get. This may not have been obvious for someone downloading the images in order to see them, but I was actually conducting a test that depended on the exact size of the file I was downloading. This practice seems to be widespread, but when Googling for it very few links pop up, showing that people mostly have no idea that it happens. In this operator's case, they seem to only change images, but people on the Internet tell stories of bundling CSS and Javascript files inside HTML files, or removing comments from either of them.

The morality of this is dubious at best, in my view it should be illegal, however things are worse than that: this behavior breaks functionality in existing sites. How can you possibly guarantee that your application works as expected when mobile operators (and I guess any ISP) can change your content arbitrarily and without the possibility to opt out? It's like that joke with the boyscout explaining at camp that little old ladies are hardier than one might think, as they squirm and shout and hit you when you try to cross them the street and the instructor soon finds out that it never occurred to the boy that he should first make sure they want to get to the other side.

Here are some links regarding this, just to make sure people can find them more easily:

Mobile operators altering (and breaking) web content
Should mobile operators be free to modify content they deliver?
Mobile Proxy Cache content modification by O2
O2 UK mobile users - your operator is breaking this site for you.
Prevent mobile website image compression over 3G
Get rid of image compression on O2′s network
ByteMobile Adaptive Traffic Management

From the last link you can see that they are caching and modifying even movies, through practices like giving you a lower rate movie or caching a version with a lower resolution. They do this in the name of delivering you video content compressed with a format and codec that your device can safely open.

A solution for this? Encryption. Using HTTPS prevents access to the content from a third party. HTTPS is becoming more and more used, as the hardware requirements for its implementation become less restrictive and with the many revelations about government scrutiny of Internet communications. However, you might be interested to know that mobile operators are feeling threatened by it. Articles from their point of view decry the "threat" of encryption and the solutions against it! The terrible impact of encryption is seen as an impediment in their rightful "content and delivery optimization techiques".

Things are getting even worse. Remember the concept of network neutrality? It is a very hot topic today and a very important political and economic fight is being fought right now to protect the transparency of the Internet. However, if you look further, you see that nobody considers the practice of "optimization" as something net neutrality should protect. In December 2010, the US Federal Communications Commission set three basic rules for net neutrality:

• Transparency. Fixed and mobile broadband providers must disclose the network management practices, performance characteristics, and terms and conditions of their broadband services;
• No blocking. Fixed broadband providers may not block lawful content, applications, services, or non-harmful devices; mobile broadband providers may not block lawful websites, or block applications that compete with their voice or video telephony services; and
• No unreasonable discrimination. Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic.

So they are primarily focusing on blocking and throttling, but not on preserving the integrity of the transmitted data!

EZTV.it was a site that listed in a very simple interface the latest TV shows in the English language, together with links to their torrent or magnet links. It was very easy to use and, as opposed to other similar sites, was selective in bringing you the best link for a TV show. You didn't get a billion different torrents for an episode of a TV show, you just got the low resolution and high resolution versions and sometimes the repacked or fixed versions when the first upload was defective. It was almost ad free, as well.

Well, lately some strange things have happened and it seems to me that there is more than meets the eye in the entire story. It started with the eztv.it domain being abandoned after the intervention of the Italian authorities. EZTV were planning to change the domain to a more amenable country, like Switzerland. That happened in January.

It didn't take long until someone bid for the domain name in auction and in March the eztv.it site was back, but under a different management. For a while they were content to proxy the new EZTV site (eztv.ch), in a site that looked exactly as the old one. As you can see from the link above, the new guys actually wanted to "manage" EZTV, getting money from the torrent link business, while doing nothing than own the domain. Novaking, the guy who fronts the EZTV group, refused any deal and so, after a while, torrent links started redirecting to ad sites.

It gets even more interesting, as somehow - and I admit domain name auctioning is not something I am an expert in - the eztv.ch domain was also captured by the same people who got the .it domain. As of now, there are no official EZTV sites anymore, both eztv.it and eztv.ch are impostor sites and with a horrible quality of service.

We have to consider several factors here. First of all, Novaking is the nickname of a person that, as far as I know, desired to remain anonymous. Probably that is why it is easier for someone to seize domains like that if they are willing to pay money and even name themselves. Then there is the actual intervention of the Italian authorities. They seemed to be angry about a site that provided torrent links, but don't seem to have anything against an exact copy of that site bought money down and that intents to make a lot of money out of ads. What happened in Switzerland is less clear. Did Novaking just abandon the fight and ditched that domain as well because he thought the entire thing was too big a hassle or was there some kind of hostile takeover, just like with the Italian domain? And finally, you have the new registrar of the two domains listing a Dominguez Emmanuel Hernandez, with an address in the United Kingdom. As several cases in the past showed, UK is really against file sharing sites, even if they are just linking to illegal content.

As far as I can gather, it should have been more difficult, not easier, for an entity as Hernandez to do the kind of work that Novaking did. It could all be foul play from the authorities and/or the legal and commercial entities dedicated to fight piracy. Certainly they would not be shy to use the vague laws that govern the Internet to their advantage to hurt their adversaries who do the same thing. However, if that would be true, they would lose the moral ground for their supposed reason to fight against file sharing.

Of course, it may also be some sort of internal split and subsequent power struggle inside the EZTV distribution group. Maybe this Hernandez guy was an inside man all along and he decided he wanted more money from his work. However that doesn't sound all true either, as the quality of the work on the fake eztv sites is terrible compared to what it was before and the functionality of the site is not all there, like someone has copied the old EZTV site from the web and not having access to the source code. There are some tweets that mention the site having reverted to "ancient passwords", though, so maybe there was access to the database of the site, somewhere in the past.

The last speculation I have is that after losing the .it domain EZTV voluntarily sold the .ch domain. An IRC message on the EfNet #eztv channel announced the end of the Novaking EZTV era:

[2015.04.25 20:24 PDT] <@NovaKing_> it was fun running eztv. Hope you guys had enjoyed it. site has new owners now. farewell.

As you can see he uses the term "owners", which might suggest a sell.

Well, I am curious of what actually happened in this very interesting story, but as things are right now, I am not sure I will ever find out. TorrentFreak has posted a more detailed explanation of what happened: it was a dubious hack, involving snatching one's domain from under them, stealing their email and impersonating them with inpunity. One thing is certain: you should not use the eztv.it and eztv.ch sites anymore, as well as search the net using the eztv brand name. In the best case scenario, you would be supporting an immoral act of web site theft and impersonation, and in the worst you would be using a web site handled by antipiracy organizations.

The Gift of Fear has popped up repeatedly in my field of view, recommended by multiple sources. I started reading it and at the beginning I thought it had a nice concept: the systematic study of violence perpetrated by people, written for reasons of protecting ourselves. However, Gavin de Becker has a writing style that got to me really fast. He sounds like he is the lecturer in a police conference, and half of everything he says is just marketing for the bits that are going to come next. You know the type: "I will reveal to you the secrets of the universe, but before I do that in one of the next chapters, let me tell you a little story". I mean, what he is saying makes sense, but he oversells it so brutally that I could not continue reading past the half of the book. You know, he sounds a lot like Walter O'Brien, the guy who's life is supposedly the basis of the TV show Scorpion. He doesn't sound like the O'Brien on TV, but like the actual guy, always overselling and overstating everything he allegedly did. Also the little anecdotes are useful in the book, but his explanations are so over the top. Man!

Anyway, the things that I chose to take from the book is the JACA system for assessing threats and the fact that when your intuition is telling you something, it either means it has access to some data that you are not conscious of or that it malfunctions and in either case you need to pay attention. The JACA system is about someone being more of a credible threat if they pass four tests. J: they feel Justified to harm you. A: they feel that they have no Alternative to violence. C: they believe the Consequences of violent action will be manageable. A: they believe they are Able to do you harm. Of course, that immediately makes someone believe that the first step of counteracting such a person is to convince them they are not justified, which fails on so many levels, especially with an antagonist.

The book covers all kind of violence: rape, murder, stalking, assassination, road rage, office vengeance, domestic violence, even violent children (I haven't gotten to that part). I can imagine how this book would be very useful to young people, scared women, maybe even children, but with the language being so pretentious and the guy making it all sound like a marketing pitch, I doubt it would be accessible to any of them. Let me reiterate: I believe the subject of the book is a good one and it should be addressed. I also don't criticize the conclusions that Becker reaches or doubt his professional experience. What I am saying is that the way the book is written stylistically made it unreadable for me. So instead of reading a few pages every week, I've decided to stop reading it. Sorry, Gavin! I only wish someone would make a short summary of it, since a lot of the stuff there is at least interesting, if not downright useful.

The same people that did Star Trek: Hidden Frontier created the three season Star Trek: Odyssey. The first season was pretty good, beginning a story that was a combination of Voyager, Deep Space Nine and even Enterprise, the second season had fewer resources and the third season was decent, but the story was a complete mess that was very hard to grasp. Luckily enough, the superfluous homosexual stories in Hidden Frontier were almost not existent in Odyssey. Instead we were treated to intergalactic invasions, religious empires, slipstream drives, artificial wormholes, omega particles, anti-omega particles, Romulan first officer played by lovely Michelle Laurent and some decent (not good) screenplay. The technical effects, acting and directing varied from OK to really bad. They clearly learned a lot from Hidden Frontier, but the green screen continues to be their greatest enemy.

Even better, it is a crowdfunded show and you can watch it all online, for free, on YouTube. Here are the links for all three seasons:

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Enjoy!

I was trying to do a simple thing: configure a daily rolling log for log4net, meaning that I wanted that log files would be created daily and the name of the files would contain the date. The log was already configured and working with a normal FileAppender, so all I had to do was find the correct configuration. There are several answers on the Internet regarding this. I immediately went to the trusty StackOverflow and read the first answers, copy pasted lazily, and it seemed to work. But it did not. So warning, the first answer on StackOverflow about this is wrong.

So, my logs had to be named something like Application_20150420.log. That means several things:

• The name of the appender class has to be set to log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender
• The name of the log files need to start with Application_ and end in .log
• The name of the log files need to contain the date in the correct format
• The logger needs to know that the files need to be created daily

This is the working configuration:

<appender name="FileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.RollingFileAppender">
     <filter type="log4net.Filter.LevelRangeFilter">
         <acceptOnMatch value="true" />
         <levelMin value="DEBUG" />
     </filter>

  <file type="log4net.Util.PatternString" value="c:\logfiles\Application_.log" />
  <appendToFile value="true" />
  <rollingStyle value="Date" />
  <datePattern value="yyyyMMdd" />
  <preserveLogFileNameExtension value="true"/>
  <staticLogFileName value="false" />

  <lockingModel type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender+MinimalLock"/>
  <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
    <conversionPattern value="%date %-5level %logger - %message%newline"/>
  </layout>
</appender>

As you can see, it is a little counter-intuitive. You do not need to specify the date in the file name, it will be added automatically, and you absolutely need to use preserveLogFileNameExtension, otherwise your files would look like Application_.log20140420

I took the name of the anime from a YouTube video, recommending it as one with a great twist in it. I watched for two episodes as the main protagonist, an ordinary guy in a Japanese highschool, starts talking to a strange girl (Haruhi Suzumiya) in his class, gets coopted in a mad scheme to create a club that investigates mysteries - specifically aliens, time travelers or espers, then adding the three other members of the club. I thought it was going to be about this club actually investigating something. But no, in the third episode we realize that the three other members are an alien, a time traveler and an esper. Soon after we find out that they know about each other and that each of them and, indeed, their entire race/organization were figments of Haruhi's imagination made reality. Haruhi apparently has the ability to create entire universes, essentially making her a goddess, albeit unknowingly.

So far so good, but then for 28 episodes I waited for anything interesting to happen. Where was that amazing twist? Apparently, the twist was that she was some supernatural phenomenon and that's it. The rest is just a typical cliched Japanese high-school story, the one where the lead character is a male boy surrounded by beautiful girls that have an almost undisclosed interest in him and that do crazy stuff together. When the last episode wasn't even closing the series, I got really mad. It was a complete waste of my time. Ugh!

A World Out of Time is a book out of time as well. Larry Niven wrote the book in 1976 and it describes events that happen over a span of three million years, but it feels like The Time Machine. The hero is a guy from the 70s who's memory gets uploaded in the body of a convict hundreds years later, sent on a mission that was supposed to last tens of thousand of years (Earth time), but ending up in a joyride around the galaxy that brings him back on Earth millions of years later. The strange world of immortal creatures living like feudal savages in a world filled with broken and discarded technological wonder, but somehow still looking human, is difficult to take in. The cowboyish behaviour of the lead character and his inconsistent switch between genius and ineptitude don't help either.

It doesn't mean the book is not entertaining. I had fun with it. However it feels really long and old and I don't intend to read the other two Niven books in the same batch: The Integral Trees and The Smoke Ring, even if they sound slightly more interesting.

The second book of The Reckoners series revolves around Firefight, a character from Steelheart, the first book, that I cannot explain without spoiling it. Brandon Sanderson outdid himself, managing to describe a dark world of bright colors, a desperate and dramatic situation in which hope shines through, an impossible romance inside a war story and a totally positive view on fear. Contrasts everywhere, like a bad metaphor that discovers it is a simile before a book ends. Well, if you read Firefight you will get the reference.

The action and plot of the book are much more detailed and a level above what happened in Steelheart. The villain is more interesting, the interactions between the members of the team are more complex, with various shades of conflict, plus an interesting new location in a sunken city filled with glowing plants that feed the people and provide light at the same time. I can't wait for Calamity, the third book in the series, to appear in 2016.

I am starting to like Brandon Sanderson. Only at the end of Steelheart did I realize that he kind of used the same plot device that he used for Elantris: the ten-years-ago one. Ten years before the action of the book, Calamity struck: a red star-like light in the sky that gave random people immense powers. The governments of the world tried to fight back, but all of them ended up capitulating, declaring "epics" as impossible to control as natural disasters. Enter David (the name probably not chosen at random) an eight year old child who witnesses the death of his father at the hands of an epic that then proceeds on taking over Chicago as his personal fiefdom. Now, at 18, David meets with The Reckoners - a group dedicated to fight back - in order to avenge his father.

First book in The Reckoners series, which is a planned trilogy, Steelheart is a very refreshing take on the superhero genre, original in the sense that it takes its name after the main villain and follows a young boy who advances in life using his cunning, knowledge and personal effort, not some random superpower. The characters are easy to sympathize with and the story is very nice. Not everything is perfect, as the story contains many political, economic and even technical plotholes. However, the writing is very well done, easily making the reader forget and forgive any inconsistencies between reality and the storyline.

As with Elantris, I listened to the audio version of the book. Classical narration, but was very nice. The book is a sort of young adult thing, but I enjoyed it very much nonetheless. I can't wait for the second book in the series: Firefight. I may have to first read Mitosis, a short story placed in the same universe.

In a world dominated by trilogies and quadrilogies and sagas, it is refreshing to see that some people are writing stand-alone fantasy books. I've first heard of Brandon Sanderson when he ended up writing the last books in the Wheel of Time series, after its initial author died; those books were the best in the series, even if he had to work with Jordan's notes. Recently, I've stumbled upon this audio adaptation of Sanderson's book Elantris, produced by Graphic Audio, a company that doesn't just created narrations of books, but full audio plays - while changing nothing of the initial text.

Despite some parts being a bit too optimistic, some too slow and some really obvious - waiting for a character to catch up with you is not fun - the book was really entertaining and original. It also was Sanderson's first widely released book, so I can forgive his lack of perfection :). I really liked the story and the characters in the book. In truth, the book's message is one of hope, one of encouragement toward the human spirit becoming the best it can be. I couldn't help thinking that Sanderson probably portrayed himself in Raoden, and that guy is great.

Anyway, the plot revolves around the magical city of Elantris, populated by God like creatures that shine with the light of magic and are almost omnipotent. However, the story starts ten years after a horrible collapse of said city, which transformed every Elantrian into an immortal husk, heart not beating, hair falling, skin blotched by dark spots, incapable of healing the smallest cut or bruise, but fully capable of pain, unneeding of food, but fully able to feel ravenous hunger at all times. The process, called Shaod, has not ended, it still occasionally picks people at random and turns them into these creatures of eternal pain. The human inhabitants of nearby towns have quarantined Elantris and anyone affected by the Shaod is thrown inside the rotting city.

There are two main characters: prince Raoden and his bride to be, princess of a nearby kingdom, called Sarene. Not only them, but almost every actor is full of spirit (pun intended) and really likable, even the antagonists can be understood and sympathized with. The story is full of events that lead to character development, politics, smart plotting, drama and comedy.

Well, in the end, with all my talk of stand alone books, I was a bit sad to see the story end. I wanted more, and that's a good sign, right? Sanderson is supposedly considering writing a sequel, but it's not something that will happen soon and it will involve different characters. I liked Elantris and I recommend it to all fantasy fans.

There would be no point for reviewing the individual books, since, like with Corwin, it is one big story spanning five books. Eight years after the first five disappointing books in the series were published, Roger Zelazny comes back with a little more writing skill, a more interesting plot and a different character. That's the good news. The bad news is that it is pretty much like the Corwin cycle, only with a guy that uses magic instead of a stupid sword. His name is Merlin and he is Corwin's and Dara's son, inheriting both Amber and Chaotic blood. Somehow he still gets his ass kicked by his father, though.

The characters are again, like something from a high school teen movie set in the middle ages. People are mortal enemies and then make conversation, make up and help each other against another mortal enemy, who will probably help them both sometimes later. Arrogant nobility behavior mixes with a general ineptitude to use any knowledge from the "shadow lands" even if a lot of the characters gain their education on Earth. The only interesting thing seems to be an AI that Merlin created... which then calls him dad and acts just like every other generic character in the books. And everybody is just so amazingly and mind stunningly stupid! I couldn't take another book in this crappy series.

Bottom line: The Amber Chronicles was a total waste of my time, the only advantage it has being that its writer ended both cycles and then died, making any sequels improbable. I kid you not, Eragon was way better and it was written by a 19 year old!

And thus ends the fifth book in the Chronicles of Amber, and the last in the Corwin cycle. Written between 1970 and 1978 by Roger Zelazny, it was one of the most lazy fantasy series I've read so far. The Courts of Chaos is once again a book that has no connection with its title. Nothing really happens in the courts of chaos except at the very end. All previous developments in the story are discarded completely and it feels like the author slept through writing the book. It was one of the most WTF books in the series so far, as well. At every section there was at least one scene where I felt like those people watching football games and shouting at their TV about what the player should have done.

Let me give you some examples. The book itself starts with a circular time paradox, where we get to see Corwin cut off Benedict's artificial arm. This had already happened in the previous book, but from the other perspective. Thus the metallic arm was only there to be severed because it has been severed in the past, its origins non existent. Then each of the children are given orders by their father. Why would they listen to them is beyond me, as was his entire reason for leaving, reappearing, etc. Anyway, he sends Corwin on a quest to carry the Jewel of Judgement (nobody did any judgement with that stone!!) to the courts of chaos, where Benedict already went using a trump card. Of course, why call Corwin's grandfather to make another card so that he can get there instantaneously? Why indeed. So we are exposed to this totally boring expedition where people fight like children with swords and crossbows and throwing rocks at each other. No guns, of course, that would be cheating. When Corwin uses a stone to make his enemy drop his crossbow, he ignores the crossbow and almost dies in the process. When he gets to the crossbow again, he smashes it! Why use a ranged weapon at all? Oberon made a blood raven out of a bit of Corwin's blood, to accompany and protect him in shadow. Why not make a bloody (pun intended) army of ravens? Wouldn't that have been better? And it just goes on and on. They never use the cards in this book, for example, after it was already obvious they can be used as communication devices as well as offensive weapons.

Nothing really made sense, in a nutshell. I am pretty convinced Zelazny was stoned out of his mind when he wrote this, but with some bad shit, since it never seems to increase his creativity. The ending was like a slap in the face, as after their victory, using armies of pedestrians and cavalry, a funeral procession for Oberon appears out of nowhere, with a lot of people and dragons. I kid you not, they had dragons, but their only use was decorative, like some sort of Chinatown celebration paper-mache things. And they got there not by treading the land like idiot Corwin, they actually came directly there. Oh, and since Corwin didn't feel like being king, they crowned another brother. Who, you might ask? Is it the brilliant strategist Benedict? Is it the loyal and strong Gerard? Is it the devious and aloof Julian? No, it's totally Random (another pun, couldn't help myself).

The next book in the series is the first in the Merlin cycle and the first book was written in 1986. It gives me hope that in 10 years Zelazny learned to fucking write!

I don't usually post animal videos, but this really is very cute. It is space related, as well, as it is taken by a camera in Baikonur's space center. Check it out!



Got it from an article about the animals living near rocket launch pads: Launch Pad Animals, Ranked

More into the secret life of the gopher here: No one plays golf on Mars

The pattern (ahem!) becomes apparent once again: same lead character doing stuff in random order just to make the story be the way it was imaged by the author, same boring exposition, same artificial drama that could have been avoided easily if Corwin would have acted like a real character and not some cardboard placeholder of the lead, same stupid and obvious twist at the end, giving the name of the book even if most of it was about something else, same lackluster secondary characters, completely oblivious and helpless if not for the main protagonist and the mighty writer god. Indeed, the mock metaphor is not so far stretched when you think that in order to do anything worthwhile, people have to step on a pattern drawn on the floor and follow the lines exactly, without stopping, or they die. Maybe so we understand the villain better, trying to spill the blood of the children of Oberon, in order to destroy the existing pattern and build one anew: a book worth reading.

In The Hand of Oberon, Roger Zelazny again throws his Corwin character into a series of unlikely events, wooden dialogues and implausible behaviors. All strange events, that by all established rules should not be possible, are completely ignored by the characters until they appear relevant to some great reveal. Again a villain must walk the pattern and they must stop him, by posting guards, by walking the pattern after him, yadda yadda yadda. No one even considers taking a stone off the ground and hitting him on the head with it while they are hopping around the magical Hopscotch (not to mention a rubber bullet gun which would have solved everything in most situations). No one interrogates the corroborating witnesses or the people involved in the same situations until it is too late and they themselves don't act unless confronted later on in a sort of "oh, yeah" moment that is nothing but embarrassing.

The ending is just as muddled, with a scene that sees the villain put in storage for later use and a great reveal that had been obvious for a book and a half. No one seems to really care that the shadow realms have different rates of time passage either, so instead of using some trump to go to the fastest realm to talk or plan and return with entire plans made up, they sit around in feudal palaces in Amber, looking all important. I mean, Zelazny never truly describes their attire (unless it's some girl, and then he must describe her to the size of her cups), but I think that a kevlar shirt and some blue jeans and sneakers would have done wonders to the politics of the place. Oh yeah, kevlar probably doesn't work in Amber.

One book to go until the protagonist changes. At least there is some hope there...

Sign of the Unicorn continues where the second book ended and ends with another cliffhanger reveal that more or less has little to do with the content of the book! While I admit this book is slightly more interesting than the first two, the way the characters act and particularly the way Roger Zelazny completely ignores some of the main points in those books is becoming increasingly annoying. And just like the guns in The Guns of Avalon were a mere detail in an otherwise completely unrelated story, the Unicorn is something that just appears twice in the same book!

OK, enough ranting. This particular volume of the story (because it would be quite impossible to read the book without the first two, so in essence it is still the same book) is hinting about the origin of the strange forces attacking the realm, as well as explaining some more what had happened to Corwin and the court intrigues that led to it all. More of the siblings make their appearance, but their characters are reduced to conversation pieces in feudal Poirot-like instances, when they just come when bidden or do something that is instrumental to the plot going... in the same direction it was going. Instead of walking around with two Ingrams on his belt, Corwin continues to depend on his sword and reflexes, while sleeping underneath the same roof as his murderous and treacherous relatives. Instead of getting the man who sprung him from jail and using his unparalleled gift, Corwin seems to have forgotten about him completely. When he misses an important piece of jewelry that actually saves his life, he just abandons it and goes to do his usual business. And what about Bleys? After finding a solution for enhancing the power of the tarot cards, he just decides to use it once, on a single person. What about Oberon, man?! He's your dad!

Apparently, it wasn't enough ranting. It is kind of difficult for me to accept the layout of the story. Like any young adult movie recently, the author takes your sight and nails it to his narrow perspective, his favourite character and the things he feels he needs to do. Same unsympathetic shallow characters, same disaffectionate way of describing events, same predictable deus-ex-machina devices to promote the plot. Thank God these books are short!